


Last Man Standing

by Foxy_sama



Category: Naruto
Genre: Complete, Everybody's dead Jim, Gen, Lone Survivor, One-Shot, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Kaguya, Short, except for Kakashi, title says it all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 13:31:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19465012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foxy_sama/pseuds/Foxy_sama
Summary: In a desolate world there is only one person left. Always late. Post-Kaguya. Rated T for brief-ish mostly-non-graphic depiction of corpse decay. Very open-ended; zero implications; but, y'all can use your imaginations on that ending.





	Last Man Standing

When the noise stopped he went to see them. Or what was left of them. There had been numerous sounds of a catastrophic battle as they duked out a years-long-coming grudge match. It wasn't as if there was anyone around to stop them.

He went to see.

Was it better or worse that his students had bled out before he got there? At least he hadn't watched them die. Nor did he get to say goodbye or annoy them for a final time. Sasuke and Naruto's bodies were cooling on the rocks by the time he arrived. Sakura's was stiffening where he had left her; sat up against a boulder, having collapsed and quietly passed from chakra exhaustion.

He buried them where they lay. He went back and buried Sakura. The ghosts of dead men returned to the realm in which they belonged. All of them. No-one wanted to be trapped for the rest of their not-lives on a dead plane of existence when they could go back to their loved ones and spend the next stretch of eternity with them instead. It was understandable.

He stopped thinking past that.

For the next while he buried fallen comrades. Then he had to rest. Then he realized how hungry he was. He ate a ration bar. Hours later he dug a hole, defecated, and filled the hole with loose dirt. Any eyes on him as he did so were glazed and sightless. In a field of corpses, who was left to call him out on being crass in the public eye? Many of his audience had lost their eyes and it wasn't as if the birds cared.

So it was him and the corpses and the birds. They came in flocks; feasting on putrefying flesh. Bone-white skin, black dried blood, birds and flies and maggots and worms. How long had it been? There was the ground and the sky. There was daylight and darkness. There was a lone scarecrow standing amidst acres of carnage and devastation, desolation and decay. The scavengers had come to harvest and he had no desire to fight them for it. For hours among black ruffling feathers he stood in place - thinking of nothing and feeling the futility of burying anyone more - until he finally went mobile and took a walk.

He only walked; didn't run or tree hop or shunshin. What point was there to race? Walked until his feet bled. Walked until his knees buckled and color bled to black. Rested until he woke. Then he went back to walking. He walked until at last he stood in an empty clearing, staring at an all-too familiar stone which was far too small for all the names that needed to be added to it. Stared until a voice didn't quite cut through the cold shroud of shock. It whispered under foggy velvety confines: _"Did I make it in time?"_

No. He was late, wasn't he?

Always, always late.


End file.
